I have been trying to shave with my new straight razor for the last week with no success whatsoever.I have been using a shavette for about six months now and I just couldn't shave with the real one since I felt it just wouldn't cut.
Desperate I had already tried to hone it myself when I became a member in SRP and the advice I was given was that the place I bought the razor from , was selling them already shave ready so I must have damaged it by stropping it wrong.But what I did while stropping was the same like the videos I 've seen and the advice I read.They also advised me to have it professionally honed cause I might have done an even bigger damage trying to hone it.But I was just not ready to give up yet.
I followed the only advice I could follow at the time , that wouldn't cost me time or money , which was to pay extra attention on my shaving angle since it is much more important with a real straight.And it was really good advice cause with the shavette I could shave easily with 30-40 degrees angle , though I would always use 30 , while the straight worked for me best with about 20 degrees for the WTG pass and almost flat on my face for the rest.But the shave was still pretty bad.
The site I bough my equipment had also given me some instructions , mainly in the form of dos and don'ts for the items I bought.For my strop it said "DON'T use the rough side" , but yesterday I suddenly had the urge to do so and so I did.I immediately felt that it had worked , it had done something that even 150 passes on the smooth side wouldn't (I say this because I had tried to use from 30 to 150 passes in order to see if I could get any results). After 20-30 full passes on the rough side , I did 40-50 full passes on the smooth side and knew it had worked.Till then the smooth side had no pull on the razor whatsoever and even though it was doing something to the edge (I knew that cause I had tested the razor before and after stropping on the smooth side with tests other than shaving) it was not nearly enough for me to shave.
So here I am today having successfully shaved with my new razor for the first time and even though it was not as good as I am used to with my shavette , it was something I can call a shave , it was a start.
Now I know that I definitely want to try linen , since the rough side worked so well and my strop hasn't got one.